Sermon 04/06/08 (Luke 24:13-35)

“Another Case of Mistaken Identity”
Luke 24:13-35
Rev. Désirée H. Gold
St. Mark’s United Church of Christ, Baltimore, MD
Sunday, 6 April, 2008
Third Sunday of Easter
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This week marks two important anniversaries in human rights history. The news has been ablaze with stories marking the forty years since the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4th, 1968. And April 9th marks the execution, in 1945, of Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pacifist who plotted to assassinate Adolph Hitler. Neither man lived to see the Promised Land, but both changed history indelibly. Although Bonhoeffer’s plot against Hitler was not successful, he spoke truth to power and fought the Nazis, mostly without violence. Although institutional racism lasted long beyond King’s death (and, one could argue, continues today), Dr. King changed the face of race relations and so much more.

We remain haunted, I think, by their legacies. Bonhoeffer has been a hero of mine for many years and, indeed, he inspired Martin Luther King, Jr. Forty years after his death our world reverberates with memories of King’s assassination. Although Bonhoeffer is not quite the household name that King is, he remains a preeminent name among those who continue the nonviolent battle for human rights. We honor both men for the work they did in their lives, for the sermons, speeches, and writings they left behind, but we venerate them, too, as martyrs.

I was not in Baltimore, much less alive, when the race riots took place forty years ago this week. I certainly wasn’t in Nazi Germany when Bonhoeffer was hanged. But the stories of their deaths have been passed down through history. The fact that King was assassinated, that Bonhoeffer was executed, remain part of the fabric of 20th century history and perhaps figure into the veneration of these human rights heros. They are martyrs, and martyrs are remembered in part for their spectacular deaths.

This past week I read an article questioning what would have happened if Martin Luther King had not been shot in Memphis that day. What if he had lived? He’s younger than some of you -- he would have turned 79 in January. What more might he have done if he had had another forty or fifty years? Would he have gotten closer to the Promised Land of a colorless society? Would he still be a hero, or would some scandal have ripped him from the headlines?

Bonhoeffer would be 102 if he were living today, but what if he had not been killed in that Nazi concentration camp? What if he had, in fact, killed Adolph Hitler? What more would he have done? What more would he have written? Would Martin Luther King, who had been so inspired by the dead pastor’s writings and works, have had a chance to meet his hero? Would Bonhoeffer have faded into the background, gone on to live a quiet old age?

It is, of course, impossible to answer these “what ifs.” A lot can happen in a few decades, and we will never know what would have become of these two men who are such heros in death. They live on in the legacies they left behind, but we remember these champions of nonviolence, in part, for their violent deaths.

Jesus, too, died a violent, humiliating death. Such a promising young religious leader (like his modern followers, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King), his life was cut short by people who were afraid to hear his message. Here, indeed, is where we find him in this morning’s scripture. Two men, walking along the road to Emmaus, must share the sad, yet confusing, news of Jesus’ death with the man who joins them along the path. This man, of course, is the risen Christ, but they don’t know that. They know only that “Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people” had been condemned and crucified but that there had been some strange thing about his tomb being empty. The two men clearly do not understand the meaning of the empty tomb; we are told that their faces were sad. As far as they know (at least in the first part of the scripture we hear today), Jesus, a great prophet, is now dead.

Three great prophets dead and gone: Jesus Christ, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The thing is, that’s not how this story works.

As pastors, Bonhoeffer and King were, of course, followers of Jesus’ teachings. So, I hope, are we. We read Jesus’ message about caring for the poor, loving our enemies, and I hope we follow those teachings. Jesus was a great rabbi and he left behind a legacy of sermons we find in our gospels. He was a man very close to God whose lessons we can follow.

We can follow Bonhoeffer’s and King’s teachings in much the same way. I am in awe of Bonhoeffer’s moral struggle, which led him, a pacifist, to conclude that assassination was the only appropriate response to Hitler. I kneel at the feet of King’s legacy -- how this one man had such an incredible influence in a racial atmosphere that I can barely imagine.

All great teachers, these three. But we risk losing the reason for our faith when we focus solely on the teachings of Jesus. Few people can best Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, Jr. when it comes to powerful sermons, but Jesus did it. Yet however important his teachings were, Jesus had more to give us than just what he said. He had more to give us, even, than a violent death to remember with sadness. He is not a martyr. He died a gruesome, violent death, it’s true. Jesus was human, and he really did die. He had all the makings of a traditional martyr: important prophet killed for upsetting the status quo, for challenging authority. There remain aspects of martyrdom in our memory of him too. We commemorate Good Friday every year, and we use the cross as a symbol of our faith. There is a church in the Holy Land built on the spot where it is believed Jesus died. Just as John McCain made a speech this week in front of the hotel where Martin Luther King was shot, pilgrims gather from around the world to see the place where Jesus may have been killed. But, I repeat: Jesus is not a martyr in the traditional sense. While we mark the death of the human man, Jesus, our faith centers not around his human death but around his divine Resurrection. We do not worship a crucified Christ. We worship a risen Christ.

This morning’s Gospel could have been the sad story of a murdered prophet. Jesus may not even have had the legacy of Bonhoeffer and King, since there was no mass communication to spread news around the world that a popular rabbi had been killed. He was well-known in his crowd, yes, but if he had simply died on that cross -- a common execution method at the time -- his story may not have been passed down to billions of followers over thousands of years. His death wasn’t the end of things, though.

We cannot weep at the blood at a hotel in Memphis or cry at a concentration camp in Germany. We worship an empty cross because Jesus Christ is no longer dead. He has been raised. While Bonhoeffer, King, and Jesus will all live on through their teachings, Jesus gives us something more: he is alive among us.

The men on the road to Emmaus discovered, in the breaking of the bread, that the stranger they met was the man they grieved. It was, for the third week in a row, a case of mistaken identity. First Mary at the tomb, then Thomas and his doubts, and now these two men. All shared grief at the death of the man they loved. All discovered that their grief was premature.

As our hearts break over the anniversaries of two heros, and at the violence and racism that both men fought, let us remember the One who remains alive with us in the breaking of the bread.

Now let us pray.